SNAPCRAFT | Ch. 48 - Prize-Winning

Kai opened his eyes and was greeted with the familiar sight of Trudy's home. The eldest in the tribe had the interesting habit of keeping a different house for each day of the week. Looking at the mustard-yellow curtains and the upholstery on the armchair to the corner, he recalled that this was either her Wednesday or Friday home.

As he tried to stand up, a jolt of pain brought him to full awakeness. He looked at the cast covering his leg and frowned, trying to discern whether it was an attempt to let it heal or, by the state of the leg from what he last recalled, to prevent him from seeing how bad it was.

He'd made it. It had hurt like nothing else Kai had ever experienced, but he had made it. After relief came thoughts of grief and guilt. Clara. She was probably dead by now, or if she still had enough vigor to fight the blight, would be dead very soon.

He searched the area around him and saw no one. He squashed the twinge of resentment at not having anyone by his sickbed, ready to welcome him once he woke. He knew full well how few they were, and they had just lost one more. The fact that Clara had caught the blight while they were isolated up in the mountains terrified him. Could there have been an outbreak in the city too?

He spotted a snack and some cold tea left by his side. There was also a note. He didn’t feel hungry, but it must have been a day, or even days, since he last ate. He should try to eat. As he chewed on the crunchy rations and gulped, his stomach woke from dormancy and screamed for more. Kai wolfed down all the food desperately. Once he was done, he wrestled with the thought of trying to stand up and looking around for more, but as he compared the severity of the pain in his stomach with that of his leg, the pain in the leg spoke louder, and he decided to stay put. It was probably for the best. After so many hours on an empty stomach, it couldn’t be good for him to stuff himself too much.

With his thirst quenched and barely satiated, he unfolded the neatly folded note and read it. The penmanship was elegant and neat, and he instantly recognized it as Ariel’s.

“Dear Kai,

We are out around the fires. Your leg had an exposed fracture, but we’ve set the bone, and it seems to be healing OK.

There’s some food and tea, but try to eat slowly as you haven’t eaten in many days.

Ariel,

P.S. You and I are good. Sorry for acting out.”

He set down the note and frowned. Were it a few weeks ago, he would have been thrilled at the sight of a note from Ariel or reading this apology. But why wasn’t his heart racing anymore? Why did he just feel numb now?

*

During the four hours Kai had to himself, he created five new shadow puppets, which he was confident were brand new. Creating this many in just a few hours was a personal record, but it was incredible how creative one could get when there was a metaphorical gun pushed against one’s head.

The time to return to the snapping round was near. It was still hard to believe that he had made it this far. He was among the top thirty-two sectors this year. He was the cream of the crop. He wondered what kind of cultures the other contestants had. How did they train for the exams? How did they live their lives? What about Alex? What was his new sector like? Was he happier there? Had he really forgotten everything about them?

The clock kept decreasing until it hit zero, and he was transported to the next stage. Kai expected to arrive at a dark stage, shrouded by the gloom of night, but instead found himself in the shiniest stage he'd been to, a place filled with twinkling lights. Fierce reds, bright yellows, festive greens, and piercing blues flashed around him, blinking and competing for his attention. It was as if the stars had come down from heaven and decided to have a party on Earth.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the light, the next assault on his senses came in the form of movement and noise. Countless people moved in all directions at different speeds, a parade of men, women, elderly ones, and children in an impossible show of variety and diversity. There were people of all sizes, dressed in all possible colors, doing all possible things. There were children crying, friends laughing, couples hugging, families talking.

Kai just stood there for a few moments overwhelmed with the amount of people around him. It had been one thing to see a crowd of people from the roofs of the neon city, but it was quite another to be at eye level with them. Before this, the biggest crowd that Kai had ever seen up close was fifteen people. There were thousands of them everywhere here.

Kai tried to follow all the many conversations around him but couldn’t. There was too much noise. Besides the sounds of countless voices, he heard several different songs being played at once from the many colorful houses and tents around him.

“It looks like you brought quite a crowd with you today,” he heard Maia shout in his ear.

He turned to her and acknowledged her presence with a curt nod but soon returned to studying the rich environment surrounding him. No matter how appealing Maia’s company was on a deserted stage, she couldn’t compete with the crowd of genuine humans around him.

To his right, a group of children erupted into cheers. They were facing a fancy vehicle that had been opened on its side to allow all the passersby a view inside. There was a series of bottles with numbers drawn, and then, to the sides of the booth, racks filled with giant, fluffy stuffed animals. The big-bellied man reached for one of them and gave it to the children.

On the horizon, he saw a giant wheel that turned in its place. It stopped and started for no apparent reason. Kai saw little pods on the edges of the circle, and grabbed the camera and zoomed in on them, finding people sitting inside. He stood there watching the giant wheel for a moment. What was the point of that thing?

He felt like a deer caught in the headlights. So many exciting things were happening around him that he couldn’t figure out what to do first.

“What is this place?” he asked Maia.

“It’s a fair.”

“Finally, you agree with me. It is unfair. Why does Daisy keep pulling the rug from beneath my feet like this?”

“No. You misunderstood. I said that it is. A. Fair. A funfair.”

“Funfair? What is that?”

“It’s something almost as old as humanity,” explained Daisy. “A group of itinerary merchants and entertainers used to host these all over. It used to be a place where families went to have fun.”

So that's what it was. No wonder that it all felt so alien to Kai. The day Daisy separated the world into separate sectors, she killed this kind of event. What was she thinking resurrecting something her meddling had killed? Was it a display of regret for partitioning humanity? Or was it a show of mockery for all that humanity used to be and have?

He wondered what spectacle he would have met without purchasing [Populate]. Would he have landed in a deserted fair, similar to the factory? Or would it have this many people? Would the colorful light bulbs have been broken shards of glass? Would any of the machines moving and blinking be working at all?

Logically, this crowd should result from the [Populate] upgrade. It was the first time people were inside the arena with him. Although there were people beneath the neon city arena, they were still outside the boundaries of the dome.

Now that the shock of seeing so many colors and hearing so many sounds fighting for his attention had passed, Kai studied the scoreboard. He saw the number 165 on his side and then the number 172 on the other. His expression turned grave. He was starting at a disadvantage. He had to get started, or he wouldn’t overcome the gap between him and this round’s opponent. To worsen it, he didn’t have that many cards left from the previous round, so he would have to ensure he collected enough cards to pass to the next round.

“What’s the plan?” came the shout from Maia, awakening him from his stupor.

“I don’t know. There’s so much going on. To worsen it, I have no idea what these people are doing, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”

Maia nodded in agreement. “It’s true. You haven’t.”

He hated that she had access to all the information Daisy had collected on him over the years. It made him feel exposed. “Let’s just look around and try to see what’s going on,” he decided.

“Very well,” answered Maia.

Kai walked toward the nearest colorful tent, establishment, stand, or whatever he should call these entertainers and merchants. It was the one with bottles and colorful stuffed animals he had spotted earlier. As he approached it, he almost had a heart attack.

“Hello, young lad! Wanna try your luck?”

Kai looked left and right. “Are you talking to me?” He wasn’t sure what to do. The jaguar in the last stage had been the first thing to interact directly with him in an arena, but this man was talking to him! Kai was completely surprised after being put out of sync with reality for such a long time.

“I don’t know,” Kai heard someone say behind him.

A ginger-haired boy walked toward the trailer, holding hands with a cute girl. Kai grimaced, embarrassed at how he assumed the man had addressed him.

“Come on, lad. I'll give you three rings for one buck. No, I’ll give you five. Two tosses on the house.”

“Uuuh. Come on, Billy. You can do it,” the girl encouraged the boy.

“Oh yeah? Which one do you want?” he asked, chest puffed up.

“I want that one. The big teddy bear.”

“Got it. Watch me.”

The lad accepted the five rings from the stand owner and felt their weight, assuming a concentrated look and tossing one of them in an arc toward the bottles.

As Kai watched the boy play the game at the stand, he quickly caught on. The game was quite simple. One had to toss the rings and make them so they landed on a few signaled bottles. The more points the bottle awarded, the thicker it was, and the more perfect the shot had to be to get the ring on it.

The boy completely missed the target on the first two tosses. The first ring was thrown too short and the other too wide. The rings had to be very light. The level of strength used made a huge difference in its trajectory.

“You can do it, Billy,” came the encouraging call from his girlfriend, sister, or whatever she was to him.

The boy bit his lip and finally got his throw right, getting the ring to land on one of the bottles and winning 100 points.

“Well then, boy! What a fantastic throw! Come on! You still have two more rings. If you get one hundred more points, you can gain wonderful prizes,” the vendor called excitedly, not aiming to encourage the boy but trying to get more passers-by to his stand. Kai noticed that a couple of families had heard the call and began watching the game, curious.

The remaining two throws were busts, and the boy only won 100 points.

“What do you say, boy?” asked the vendor, “Would you like three more throws for a dollar? One more good throw, and you can get your sweetheart the teddy bear she wants.”

The boy glanced at the onlookers, waiting to see if he could get more points. “What do you say, Holly?” he asked.

“Go for it, Billy. I know you can do it. You already got 100 points anyway. It’s just one more throw. You almost got it on that last throw, too.”

The boy, emboldened by the girl’s words and pressured by the crowd, fell for the vendor’s pitch and gave him some more money.

As Kai watched the boy miss three more throws, he tried to understand what Daisy wanted from him at this stage. There were dozens of such stands with different games. The haystack here was so big that he risked finding no needle, even if Daisy had hidden several.

If he were to judge the value of the cards based on how difficult it was to find them in the arena, so many people were walking around that a photo of them would get him next to nothing. Back in the city arena, pictures of common people passing by got him only a subpar common card.

He had to look for rare things. Leaving the ring toss stand, Kai moved on to the next stall. It was a game where someone had to shoot down a series of moving targets with a rifle that fired pellets.

In another stand, there was a vendor selling paper nets. People had to try getting fish out of the tank, and if they could do so, they could keep it. However, the nets were so fragile that most broke, making it incredibly difficult to catch them. In another similar game, players had a pole with a magnet attached to a string and had to fish a plastic fish out of a barrel.

As he watched several such games, he frowned. Why hadn’t anyone won a prize yet?

Ch 47.5 - Spring Regret

INDEX

Ch. 49 - Gut Feeling